Have we reached the point when it is kooky to not believe in massive amounts of intelligent life having evolved throughout the universe?

[John_DiFool]

Offspring thread this morning about the Drake Equation:

What bottlenecks would you consider for the drake equation that prevent the development of intelligent, technologically advanced life

As a spinoff of this thread, what would you consider to be bottlenecks that prevent intelligent, technologically advanced life forms from evolving? There are roughly 10^24 planets in the universe. But if you keep adding bottlenecks (only 10% pass this bottleneck, only 1% pass this bottleneck, only 15% pass this bottleneck) then after you have a couple dozen bottlenecks, you end up with only one planet in the known universe that can support intelligent life. So my understanding of various bottl…